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Inn & Around the Wick April 2014

Feast on this: Throughout May, Tofino will be hosting Feast Tofino!, the fourth annual “Stay, Dine and Play” festival. Throughout the region, restaurants offer three-course meals for $29, $39 or $49, and hotels offer great deals on accommodation. In addition, a number of special events are planned, including Spot Prawn Week (May 22 to 29) and the Dockside Festival on May 24. One event you won’t want to miss is the chef’s table dinner at The Pointe on May 8, with guest chef Trevor Bird of Vancouver’s Fable Restaurant. He and the Inn’s culinary brigade will be creating a five-course shellfish feast that will be a sneak peek of the tasting menu The Pointe will offer during Feast. Tickets are only $75 (not including wine), but seating is extremely limited, so book now at specialevents [at] wickinn.com or 250-725-3100 x 222. For more information on all the Feast events, visit www.feastbc.com.

Going green: The Inn’s Environmental Steward, Jamie Hill, has recently taken on the role of Green Steward, helping to find environmentally friendly ways for the team at the Inn to do business while honouring all aspects of the temperate rainforest. He says, “I cannot imagine taking on this role anywhere but here at the Wick. I really enjoy attending the Green Breakfasts hosted by the chair at the Tofino Chamber of Commerce. Members of the community meet monthly to discuss topics ranging from major environmental issues to local sustainable initiatives, such as the annual maintenance of the Multi Use Path. We are lucky to be in such a proactive and forwarding-thinking community.”

New menus at the Inn: Over the past two months, executive chef Warren Barr and restaurant chef David Sider have been cooking up a batch of new menus in On the Rocks Bar & Lounge, Driftwood Café and The Pointe (brunch and dinner). Countless hours of work have gone into each menu, from researching products and exploring techniques to ensuring that there are dishes to appeal to all different tastes and, above all, maintaining the vision and standards of the Inn. “It’s totally a labour of love and it’s definitely one of my favourite parts about my job,” says Sider, whose goal is to create a cuisine that is uniquely of its place here in Tofino. “We rarely run into problems looking for the right supplier, but that is entirely because all of our dishes start with one outstanding ingredient that we want to showcase and then the dish is built from there.”

A bouquet of flavour: Flowers for dinner? Sure, why not? One of the most popular new items on The Pointe dinner menu is the Chilled Shellfish & First Flowers: Dungeness crab and side stripe shrimp with the surprising addition of sweet elderflower and nasturtium petals and a few drops of tangy cultured cream poured at the table. “I just think it’s a unique use of very typical ingredients that we have at our fingertips,” says restaurant chef David Sider. “The shellfish that we are able to get here is outstanding, so is a bit of an obvious choice, but the fact that flowers are so rarely used as an ingredient always surprises me.”